The Story of Sam Lowry

 

The movie opens with fear. Check and mate. If you want misunderstanding, mis-communication and extreme behavior, use fear. Then we see the fly on the wall. The jungian archetype of the unconscious, just below the surface, everyone projecting their shadow on their neighbor, listening to them as a fly on the wall to find the place to project their own iniquities, and thereby bolster their own self-righteous pride, just as their Big-Brother government does to them. The person to whom this shadow is projected to upon in the movie is Sam Lowry. Apparently he has been having prescient dreams about his female soul-mate, Jill Layton. Where the male and female archetypes need to be disambiguated, removing any mystery from their roles in society, any conflict in the official role of male female is immediately ferreted out through the collective unconscious of the masses, and is actively programmed subliminally into the minds of the populace through mind control in the ubiquitous TV programming to mete this metaphysical “here's looking at you kid” effect. The only terrorist (besides the State's real terrorism) in the movie, is Sam, for his dreams of love, a passion beyond control of the master brainwashers. The levers of state actually bring these two together, which for the rest of the movie the state seeks to clean the slate of this off-script love affair. The fantasy simulacra is the only thing important, and the main folly is emotional concern for your fellow man, which would otherwise effectively turn the tables on the power of the noxious and arrogant government's avarice. All the stupid tubes and ducts are the feminization of society, helping central planning have bestial domination over needless dross society. The Deniro, Heat Engineer, Tuttle, is wanted, whose only crime is being a free lance worker, outside of the Government patronized Central Services union, and mistakenly executed for by Buttle. The Union wants Tuttle, the backdoor lover, dead, and, working hand-in-hand with the State, seek to monopolize their agency goods and services. Competition is the death knell for the greedy corporatist state, and sets the stage for everything else in the movie. Sam's narcissistic mother, as the evil genius elitist controlling everything (watch restaurant bombing scene closely), helps him get captured through her feared power, in the strangest of jealousy twists, neatly packaged into the Hamlet-like power schemes of the fake society. The state/religious theme is ubiquitous through the Christmastime setting: The Buttle mother talking to her daughter about Santa coming down the chimney, enter the militarized police to play Santa-Satan; Jill being the present to Sam in the end, enter the militarized police to play Santa-Satan. Sams happiness is going to be sacrificed, so the phony God state can continue, and he is morphed back into the fly of society, a chemical liver spot of his mother, in the re-birth of the evil saviour of youthful plastic surgery. Jill, a rival to the societal collectivism of a false idol of easily willed over childhood, is the existential letter change of fate. Having killed Jill twice, once on paper and once defending her, Sam smiles in the end because he is alive and driven insane as the central protagonist in the dystopian play, and Jill is in his mind, as in his dreams, the driver. His tiny mote of irresponsibility to austere state motives cost him his sanity. But hey, at least he paid his debt. It is all funny, because it's mostly true. Naiiiled it!

Notes: The ending sequence, not in the movie clip, is in french. Seeing the hero go insane is too much for the tender sensibilities of American audiences.

They skipped a scene involving a decomposed corpse in the movie here. It is important in the movie as a foil to the lack of the culture coming to terms with death and renewal of finding a purpose and worth of life for oneself. (Sam later slays himself, losing his wings and becoming the hero antagonist to his exalted place in the society.) Interesting edit, fortunately I caught the life should be worth losing redaction for you.